Oregon Holocaust Memorial

 

Located in the beautiful setting of Washington Park, surrounded by tall, impressive sequoias and cedar trees, the Oregon Holocaust Memorial stands as a reminder. Dedicated in 2004, the memorial recounts what happened and the testimonies of people, recounting even non-Jewish people, who were persecuted during that time. On the walk to the memorial, bronze statues of items seemingly strewn on the ground are a reminder of what people brought with them, and ultimately separated from, during the deportation. These were items considered to be important and valuable, the things they did not want to go without: a suitcase, a teddy bear, a musical instrument. What is striking is that these are the same kind of items common among refugees around the world, even today. It is effective art in terms of remembering because these are commonalities among us all.

Jake’s Famous Crawfish

 

Dining out is not the special event it once was. Many people eat out daily, typically somewhere comfortable, and familiar. Once people dressed up to go for dinner, now it is routine and is completely acceptable in some quarters to wear baseball caps, or old t-shirts, while dining out. Restaurants come and go in a throwaway society. When there is an opportunity to eat at an old restaurant, one that has been around for a long time, it is worth the time, effort, and money to try it.

Jake’s was opened in 1892 and has quite the reputation. The crawfish in the name emanates from the original business: there were pools in the basement of the building where the freshwater shellfish could be raised and shipped around the country. I was told by my server, who had been working at Jake’s for 23 years, that during prohibition the brewery across the street would drop kegs down one of the many tunnels that were beneath the city, and it would naturally roll to the restaurant where it could be served in the backroom speakeasy. Furthermore, drunken and rowdy sailors could be pressed into service, sometime recovering from their hangovers to find that they were on the veritable “slow boat to China.”

Inside the restaurant today, the wooden décor is distinctive and, with the mural-sized classic paintings, creates an ambiance that is rarely found today. Pieces of memorabilia, all nicely framed to match the feel of the restaurant, tastefully grace the walls. Above my small booth for two people was a framed matchbook cover from the restaurant, circa 1930, that was donated by a patron who had been dining at the restaurant all her life. Across the room was a nice display of antique china oyster plates, no doubt valuable, were situated above a table of six.

I visited the restaurant, sans reservation, on a Thursday evening. I was hoping they would be able to accommodate a lone person without assigning me to the bar, which they did. The clientele was convivial. People were emerging with more confidence as the second anniversary of the pandemic declaration neared. The mask mandate in Oregon was to be lifted in the following week, and people were anxious to return to some form of normalcy, whatever that might look like. My dinner was classic and straightforward: as a drink, I ordered a Capella Porter from Ecliptic Brewing, a local business, Jake’s House Salad, with a light oil and vinegar dressing with glazed walnuts and bleu cheese crumbles, and for the main course étouffée with crawfish, chicken, and shrimp. Of course, it was to expectation, and the service was exquisite.

Jake's famous étouffée 

Powell’s Books City of Books

 

Powell's: The literature section where Dickens is located

Bookstores are where our mental journeys begin. There is a symbiotic connection between books and travel – they feed one another. We read about where we are going, or where we cannot go, take books along when we travel, then journal and write while we are away.

It is an iconic bookstore, a quasi-religious shrine for booklovers. Powell’s is a must-see experience when in Portland. In graduate school, Powell’s was an online resource for hard to find, out of print texts that fueled one’s imagination. Part of that search was premised on the idea that there was that one book that would solve the research problem, it would be the answer we were looking for. Perhaps I have become jaded, or less naïve, but I am not looking for that one single book.

Watching other people in Powell’s looking for that book might be as fun as shopping for ourselves. I overheard a conversation between a middle-aged woman and her father, who had an armful of books, “Dad, would you like to have a coffee?” “I am not quite done yet.” “That’s okay. We can have a coffee with everyone, then afterwards we will let them go, and you can look some more.” In the cooking section, I observed a twenty-something couple studiously transfixed by the books, located in a locked bookshelf with glass doors that constituted the cooking with marijuana section. In the sci-fi and fantasy section, the clothes worn by patrons were even better than the books.

Powell’s is so large that it is difficult to know how to tackle it. I was not even sure what I was looking for when I went in. At first there was a temptation to add to my Dickens collection, although there was nothing in the section that was unique enough or unavailable elsewhere. I wandered through the hiking and nature section, but it was primarily focused on the Pacific Northwest. Eventually, I was entranced with the travel section. I leafed through a couple of books and guides to El Camino de San Sebastian, because we have friends who will hike it this summer. But it was the travel writing that was beckoning. I walked out with two books about Ireland, probably not a surprise to anyone.